Damned
by She's a Star
Summary: She would always be a stranger to heaven. She’d never even had a chance.' Darla muses. (Set during season 2 - 'Darla.')


**Damned**

_By She's a Star_

**Disclaimer:** Angel belongs to Joss Whedon.

**Author's Note:** I'm not exactly an Angel expert; my apologies for any errors or mistakes that contradict canon.

This is set directly after the season two episode 'Darla.'

~

            For the first time, she thought about heaven.

            Funny that she'd been alive (alive . . . it confused her now, it's not right, she knew - how many years has she spent breathing?) more than four centuries and she'd never bothered before. But why bother, she'd reasoned. She wasn't one to waste time musing over things that should never be.

            She would always be a stranger to heaven. She'd never even had a chance.

            She had never been like Drusilla, whispering _Our Father_s under her breath with blind faith, sickening devotion. Even before her heart had stopped beating, crosses had singed her flesh.

            And it was a silly thing, about God. About mortals. Praying, desperately, thinking that somehow they could be saved if they attended church every Sunday and repented their sins.

            She had always adored sin, reveled in it, imagining it to slide like silk between her fingers.

            And now were things supposed to be any different? Now that she was walking outside, her footsteps echoing but never loud enough to drown out that pounding, that relentless, endless pounding from her chest. The air felt strange and sharp in her lungs. She felt weak, and decaying - memories, so many of them, a thousand screams, a million pleads for mercy sang in her head, and she wondered if she was going crazy.

            Crazy, like Drusilla, with her little made-up songs and words strung together all wrong. She had never made sense. Even when she was alive, she'd been bewildering - Drusilla with her rosaries and careful murmured prayers. Drusilla and her hopes of goodness, of heaven.

            And there it was again, heaven, haunting her in a way that hell had never done.

            Her mind was frenzied; there were too many thoughts; she wanted to die, but oh, even death was too complicated. Fire and brimstone - that was what she deserved. Scarlet. Satan. Sin.

            She'd heard of punishments, of circles. Circles of hell. Never ending, forever, eternity, and even she couldn't comprehend it, and she'd been alive for four hundred years. Eternity, filled with too much warmth and memories of spilt blood and the stains they left. She remembered a lovely pink dress she'd had once, one that had been destroyed by a few carelessly placed droplets of red.

            And, feeling strange, she thought of heaven instead.

            What was it like? She couldn't imagine it, couldn't even begin to. Odd. She could dream up a hundred ways to kill herself now, to stop this sound, this heart, this pounding, _thumpthumpthumpthump_ and it wouldn't end unless she cut her throat, she slit her wrists and watched the blood dance down her hands, unless she tumbled down a flight of stairs and her neck snapped - a very pretty neck, Angelus had told her once.

            She missed him, in a way that hurt because she knew somehow that he could never come back. That trace of him was gone from Angel's eyes. Angel's eyes, now. 

            Angels.

            Did heaven have them? With silken white wings and curls like gold? When she was very little, before her mother had fallen prey to consumption, she'd been told she had angel's curls.

            Did they sing, and strum harps with soft fingers? She knew their hands were soft, had to be. Heaven couldn't have calluses. It seemed a little ridiculous.

            But then again, weren't angels?

            Wasn't life after death?

            Wasn't living, wasn't this heartbeat, and why wouldn't it leave her?

            She wanted to die. She wanted to run back to Angel, to beg him to sink his teeth into her neck, to feel herself die, to taste her last breath.

            But he wouldn't. Because he was noble, and good, and it was so obvious in his eyes, and she wondered if she would become that someday.

            Heaven would open its gates to him. She could tell. She had no right to be able to tell, of course; she'd been a stream of sinful things; a whore and a monster, a beguiler, a murderer.

            But she saw it. It was so clear it almost hurt to look at him now.

            She wondered if he could tell how much he had changed.

            She wondered if he had a way to. He couldn't see his reflection.

            Not like her. She'd smashed every mirror she'd seen earlier, hating the frail, sweet-looking girl with the golden hair and the blue eyes that had gone gray from the pain. She hated listening to her voice all of a sudden - it was lilting, and innocent, and she tried very hard not to realize that maybe, originally, heaven had been meant for her. Maybe angels looked like her - maybe she could have been one, maybe she was supposed to be one, but she'd gone and changed everything, she'd been weak, and in the end, the devil was so much easier to follow than goodness.

            _You damned me_.

            Angelus - Angel, no, Angel now - his voice wouldn't leave her head, and she hated the echoes, wanted them gone, wanted everything gone, wanted to die, wanted the nothing she'd felt for so long after he'd killed her to save a girl he loved purely.

            She wondered if he'd ever loved her. She wondered if it was possible, without a soul.

            The closest she'd ever come to love was him.

            And maybe the closest she'd ever come to heaven was looking in his eyes, and knowing.

            The sunlight made her hair seem gold.

            Darla closed her eyes and listened, timidly, to her heartbeat.


End file.
